Yet often, I find it difficult to figure out if it is who I really am, or who I am because it is my "armour", as in my defense mechanism... I know it is definitely partly because of a defense mechanism...and one that I have cultivated so much over the years that it has become a second skin that seems to be who I really am. And that is something which I have let happen self-consciously, so that everyone just figures that is who I am. That's not to say this is any excuse for being this way...it being a second skin is no excuse to say it isn't who I am. It's still who I am. But it is somehow an armour for that side of who I am which I refuse to let others see; if they are not able to see it, they cannot reach it, and if they cannot reach it, they cannot use it, abuse it, nor destroy it. 'It' of course, being me.
Vulnerability is that state we guard most closely. We do not want to become attached because it opens up our portal for vulnerability. And we learn to guard this vulnerability through experience. Experiences which for the most part we would categorize as unpleasant, because they have taught us pain, and it is through this pain that we have witnessed our vulnerabilities as never before, and therefore we, within ourselves, have seen it for what it is and how to shut it up tight.
This was meant to be a personal anecdote, and as usual when I write, it ends up going general, and vague, and the one(s) I intend to have this said to would likely be the one to tune out and get lost and distracted. I think, also, that me writing vaguely is another form of defense mechanism, because I am writing about my vulnerabilities for all and sundry to see, though I really had intended it for one. I could have certainly written to the person directly, but for some strange reason I felt that this was a topic I could possible learn the lesson I mean to teach myself more emphatically if I put my failings out on the laundry line.
My lesson is of humility. (And interestingly, two of my soul-siblings have expressed similar thoughts via their blogs (i.e. vulnerability, attachment, self-weaknesses, and humility); as often I am not certain if it is that we simply feed off one another's thoughts or that we truly experience the same at once..)
I have hidden my humility through my pompousness. In being a in-your-face hyper and confident girl, the girl who always has an answer and who always refuses to back down from her arguments, I seem to have done too well a job of hiding my vulnerability, so much that it has somewhat backfired on me; the ones who really need to know me, and who I really am, I am not certain if they believe that me exists. Because I myself haven't been able to figure out who this "me" is.
But (again like those others) I have acknowledged that it is a perpetual journey of self-discovery. And much of my established idealism that I have grown with love like it were my own secret garden of roses, has been one that also comes with its thorns: in letting my feet off the solid earth, in dreaming of the "ideal" I had cultivated so many expectations, so many that they could never possibly be truly practical.
Perhaps that is why it is amazing that I have found sanity in the fruition of the main dream. And that I am learning to be practical through this one dream; to let go of many others which were frivolous in many ways...and yet....
And yet, what? I don't know really.. I am writing all this without forethought, you see. I don't even know where I really am going with this. I guess, I am learning that we cannot hope to establish who we are at any given time. It is impossible. And yet, we are constantly evolving and learning. And it is through our responsibilities and relationships that we most learn to gauge ourselves. We cannot hope to hide in a cave in order to survive, simply because the person we are is too volatile to indulge in interaction. It is through interaction, and through both bad and good experience that we best learn who we are. It is through the struggle where we learn what needs to go, and through the good that we learn what we should keep.
I am addressing this discourse to a number of people, certainly. But again, this is a reminder to myself. I was in fact the one who many years ago (I seem to have been such a wise person when I was so idealistic, and yet I was naive? What a paradox)... I think it was best noted (by myself) when I observed that for a rose to grow stronger and more beautiful, it needs to be clipped and (I am stretching for the right description right now; I know I summed it up beautifully in a line that I posted on Golden Moments, let me look)...Ok found it:
So in summary: ... (and this is specifically for the one I had originally intended this message for)
I don't mean sarcasm, or mockery, by learning to be a better person, nor is it a slight to say that I am learning to become a better person through what I am discovering because of our interactions. It isn't a bad thing necessarily that the bad is brought out through them, but that more of who I am is starting to come out in the open, lots of traits that had been long-dormant because they had always been hidden behind the armour., and lots of new responses that never had reason to exist before that are now alive and new in the world like a newborn baby, yet to learn how to be clothed. I mean it in the best possible way, to be a better person for all in question.
